Regional History Project
Catalogs of Interviews:
- Santa Cruz History
- Out in the Redwoods
- Institutional History of the University of California, Santa Cruz
- Agricultural History
- Lick Observatory
The Regional History Project has been documenting the history of the Central Coast of California and the institutional history of UC Santa Cruz since 1963, through oral history. This web site includes the complete catalog of our collection, oral history resources, and links to other oral history sites on the Internet. Copies of our oral histories are available for the cost of photocopying, which varies according to the length of the document. Please contact Irene Reti at ihreti@.ucsc.edu for ordering information on the particular oral history in which you are interested. All of our oral histories are available to the public at the Special Collections and Archives of McHenry Library. Call 831-459-2547 for their hours. Selected oral histories are available in the circulating stacks of the library. You may search the library's Cruzcat catalog to find the call number for the oral history you are looking for.
Oral history is a method of conducting historical research through recorded interviews between a narrator with personal experience of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of adding to the historical record. Because it is a primary source, an oral history is not intended to present a final, verified, or "objective" narrative of events. It is a spoken account, reflects personal opinion offered by the narrator, and as such it is subjective. Oral histories may be used together with other primary sources as well as secondary sources to gain understanding and insight into history.
About the Regional History Project, UC Santa Cruz
The Regional History Project was started in July of 1963 at a time when the Santa Cruz campus of the University of California was still in the planning stages. Its major purpose was to interview longtime residents of the Central California Coast area whose comments would add significantly to the sketchy and inadequate written history of the region. A number of the interviews have concentrated on the economic history of the area (e.g. redwood lumbering, coastal dairying, apple packing and shipping) although such interviews also cover the social and cultural history of the region. In 1967 the Project expanded its scope to include a series of interviews on University history and the Lick Observatory. As oral history projects in the country have proliferated so has student and academic interest. This office now works closely with both students and faculty, as well as with community historical organizations, in introducing oral history methodology and in encouraging the use of interviewing as a method for supplementing our local and regional archives.
Regional History employs one full-time documentary historian who does preparatory research, topic and interview selection, interviewing, editing, and teaching and lecturing small groups. We also have a part-time student editor who does research, prepares question outlines, performs numerous clerical tasks, transcribes interview tapes, edits, indexes, and puts together the oral history volumes, which are published in limited editions by the University. Although we are a small project, we have continued to reach out to both the academic community and the communities in this region to inform people about oral history, and in many cases, to help in the formation of volunteer oral history projects by providing consultation services and expertise.
About the Regional History Project Staff
Irene Reti was born in Los Angeles and moved to Santa Cruz in 1978. She received her B.A. in Environmental Studies from UCSC in 1982, has worked for the Regional History Project since 1989, and is now the director of the Project. She has an M.A. in American History from UC Santa Cruz. She may be contacted at ihreti@ucsc.edu or 831-459-2847.
Availability of Interviews
Transcripts of the Project's interviews are organized and edited for continuity; the publications include an introduction, table of contents, photograph of the interviewee, other illustrations, and a detailed index. The completed volumes are available unless the interviewee has requested that they remain sealed for a specified number of years. The manuscripts are available in Special Collections at McHenry Library, UC Santa Cruz, and in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Many of the volumes are also available in the circulating collection of the library and can be checked out through interlibrary loan services if you are not in the Santa Cruz area. Many of our volumes are also available in full text (pdf format) through our website.
In most cases the manuscripts are available for the cost of reproduction. Contact the project staff at ihreti@ucsc.edu or 831-459-2847 to place an order.
No part of any manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the University Librarian, University of California, Santa Cruz.
Other functions of the Project are to help acquire published and unpublished source materials for the Santa Cruz County Collection; to assist both researchers and students working on local history topics; to give instruction in oral history methodology; and generally to help in developing and augmenting local history sources.
Copyright Restrictions
PLEASE NOTE these interviews are provided for research purposes only. All uses of these manuscripts are covered by copyright agreement between the interviewees and the Regents of the University of California. All the literary rights in these manuscripts, including the right to publish, are reserved to the University of California, Santa Cruz. No part of these manuscripts may be quoted for publication without the permission of the University Librarian of the University of California, Santa Cruz.